Monday, June 10, 2013

More than half of America thinks marijuana should be legalized. More than a dozen states have de-criminalized small quantities of pot. Washington and Oregon have legalized it. Twenty states allow the sale of medical marijuana. Yet, over half of all drug arrests in this country are for marijuana, and most of those are for small amounts.

As if those statistics from our Failed War On Drugs aren't enough, there's a new report from the ACLU that highlights the racist nature of marijuana arrests -- black are four times as likely to be busted for pot as whites. As the ACLU's Ezekiel Edwards told me on America Weekend, there's no urban-vs.-suburban distinction, it's not rich neighborhoods versus poor neighborhoods, nor is there one region of the country where the racial element is different. It is across the board in every part of every state.

That should concern even those of us who don't smoke weed, because we're paying billions of taxpayer dollars to send hundreds of thousands of our fellow citizens to jail every year -- in a country led by a man who admitted smoking pot in his youth. You'd think President Obama would realize how lucky is is that he wasn't one of the too-many black Americans who were busted for pot. The same goes for the two white men who preceded him in the Oval Office and admitted drug use in their past. Their inaction on this problem is nothing short of hypocrisy.